Stellar-Fire

What lead me to this title was my never-ending search for good, quality Sega CD games. I'm an admitted Sega CD buff, and I always felt the system not got its true comeuppance due to one of SO MANY wrong decisions on behalf of Sega (the whole belief of "interactive movies are the wave of the future in gaming!"), and as a result, it's really hard to find that one diamond in the rough amidst the dreck of TruVideo movies and heaps of rehashed shovelware. But there are those titles out there that really make the system shine and show just how well it can do things (Sonic CD, Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side, Jaguar XJ220, Silpheed, et al).And in my pursuit, I found me a cheap copy of this here Stellar Fire game (and I mean CHEAP...like, 2 dollars cheap). And is it worth its weight in CD plastic?Well...not really.This game is, for lack of a better description, a rendition of one of those PC-born, psuedo-3D tank games in which the player looks through the front windshield and shoots down nondescript, polygon-based foes (the first game to come to mind is a shareware title called "Specter FX" for the old, mid-90s Macintosh Performa, though you could find various clones of it online as free shooting games, but for the more contemporary gamers, this could remind you of "T-Mek" for the 32X). The actual purpose of the game is to drive around this flat, barren plain, shooting down enemies and searching for "Moon Crystals" and various power-ups, and collecting all those elusive crystals will cause a boss to appear. Defeat the boss, and you head to the next level to start it all anew.The game field itself is VERY flat, with no bumps or grooves to be found, a semi-worthy copy of the SNES' "Mode 7" 3D effect, but hard to navigate in part because the ground is nothing more than straight lines of dots moving in accordance to whatever direction you're going in. Moving about in the game is also as tricky when you consider the actual control scheme; pressing Up will cause your vehicle to accelerate, but letting go will only stop its acceleration, and your vehicle will continue to move forward at a certain speed (the spedometer is right above your tank's console, with a max speed of 100). Pressing and holding Down will cause it slow to a stop, but you cannot move backward, so if you overshoot a specific target, you have to stop, turn all the way around, and start the acceleration process all over again. It's unique, but a bit frustrating to get used to, and the way your tank careens so out of control will lead you to smack into whatever is in your path; go forward too fast, and you'll only have a half of a second to turn out of the way before you slam right into an oncoming pillar, trap, or enemy. One wrong hit, and you'll spin back and forth, knocking you off your course (an effect NOT for the easily motion sick).Graphical effects are the most ambitious part of the game, as the enemies' rendering in a full-on 3D, polygon-born way is a few years ahead of its popularity used in certain early PlayStation and Sega Saturn titles. The problem, though, is that early 3D models are inherently ugly no matter how many bright colors as used, and this is no exception. Near as I can tell, my tank was shooting lasers and cannon fire at random geometric shapes, whose only real attack was to ram at me head-first. Occasionally they'll fire back, and they only take one hit or so to be destroyed, but just don't ask me what it is you're fighting on this strange, dot-clad moon. And trying to differentiate obstacles, traps, and power-ups can be taxing as well, as everything is rendered in those colorful polygon mish-mashes. Thank the gods that you have some kind of "crystal compass" that leads you to your next target, but even with it to help you navigate, much of your time spent playing this game will be you roaming aimlessly at high speed getting hit at every angle from enemy robots that just fly in or plop out of the sky.I don't know if this game could've been more if the company making it had tried harder, and I can personally appreciate the ambition towards the pre-32 bit graphic effects they used, but as a whole, "Stellar Fire" is too cumbersome and monotonous to truly enjoy. It was cheap for a reason, and not really a great example of good Sega CD titles. There are better ones out there. I'm sure of it...